Hari Om Parents!
Welcome to the 8th grade class of 2024 - 2025 Bala Vihar year. started the 1st day with a lot of excitement.
We started with 3 OMs followed by the opening prayer "Sahanavatu". Kids were in unison while saying the prayer and it was so vibrant. We also did Ganesha, Saraswati and Guru shlokas.
After students and teachers introductions, we briefly talked about the 8th grade curriculum.
Stotras: Gītā dhyānam, Tapovan Shaṭkam
Topics: Yato Dharma tato Jayaḥ - a conceptual analysis of the Mahābhārata. Different events & characters will be used to analyze the dharma aspect.
Symbolism in Hinduism - understanding representations of the Divine
Bhagavad Gītā: Chapter 5 (all verses)
Then we moved to chant the 1st verse of Gītā dhyānam. There are 9 verses in the balavihar handbook and we will follow that. Next we had a good discussion about the recent festival " Ganesha chaturthi" and symbolism about Lord Ganesha. We discussed his form, his ears and his ride - the mouse, etc. we made it more interactive by having them share what they know and added the significance of the symbolism. We used real life experiences to explain the significance of the trunk and encouraged kids to visit temples in India( especially south) where we can get blessings from elephant with their soft touch using the trunk.
For icebreakers, we did a quiz on Mahabharata. We made 6 teams ( team of 3 kids) with 10 minutes of time to solve the quizzes. Then we had each team to go over the answers/findings of 1 section and had the other team finish if they did not know/had it wrong.
As we were going over it, parents joined the class and we went over the curriculum and books needed for this year to refer.
Also explained how the main curriculum will be taught from the dharma aspect. It was great meeting with the parents too. After the closing prayer, all went to arati.
Looking forward to a great session this year.
Please follow the blog for weekly class updates:
https://cmnjparentportal24-25.blogspot.com/?m=1
Pranams
Abhirami
Selvi
